The issues of scale in the number of nodes are perhaps more challenging that those of speed. As the network gets larger, issues of addressing, routing, management and fault isolation, congestion, and heterogeneity become more relevant. These issues are further complicated by the likely decentralized management structure of the NII, in which the parts of the network will be installed and operated by different organizations. We see in the Internet today that some of the protocols and methods are reaching their design limits and need to be rethought if we are to build a network of universal scale. A major effort is now being made to deal with serious limitations in the Internet’s current addressing scheme, for example.
Predictor: National Research Council
Prediction, in context:In 1994, the NRENaissance Committee, appointed by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council, produced a special report titled “Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond.” Among the committee members were Internet pioneers Leonard Kleinrock, David Clark, David Farber, Lawrence Landweber and Robert Kahn. The committee’s goal was to “study issues raised by the shift to a larger, more truly national networking capability.” Among its statements about the blossoming of the National Information Infrastructure (NII), it says: ”A major research focus of the last 10 years has been scaling network bandwidth to higher speeds (gigabits and beyond). Scaling in the number of nodes has perhaps received less attention. But the issues of scale in the number of nodes are perhaps more challenging that those of speed. As the network gets larger, issues of addressing, routing, management and fault isolation, congestion, and heterogeneity become more relevant. These issues are further complicated by the likely decentralized management structure of the NII, in which the parts of the network will be installed and operated by different organizations. We see in the Internet today that some of the protocols and methods are reaching their design limits and need to be rethought if we are to build a network of universal scale. A major effort is now being made to deal with serious limitations in the Internet’s current addressing scheme, for example. Close attention should be paid to the resolution of these problems in the Internet to derive insights for the far larger NII.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Realizing the Information Future: The Internet and Beyond
Title, headline, chapter name: Issues of Scale in the National Information Infrastructure
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://stills.nap.edu/html/rtif/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney